Shadow of the Mutant Master Read online

  The Gazelle finished the last 300,000 kilometers with tremendous speed, although it did not exceed 0.2 speol. One third of the energy the craft could consume without depleting its supplies was used by Cerl Sandford to build up the anti-detection shield to the highest possible degree. However it would not have been sufficient to sneak in unobserved if Sandford had not used a certain path of approach to Volat which was barely one kilometer wide and not completely covered by the control stations of the Arkonides and Galactic traders.

  It was the same course which he had earlier followed to smuggle Ralph Sikeron in.

  Now the Gazelle sailed like a dry leaf to the ground, breaking through a gap between the huge strange-looking trees and coming to rest a few kilometers from the forest's edge in the protection of the twilight.

  Cerl Sandford sent up a tiny rocket, a miracle of precision and efficiency. It soared into space with a hissing sound, too small to be spotted on the most sensitive, observation screens or detectors, its metallic surface too small to reflect waves, but it had a micro-transmitter strong enough to send the pre-arranged signal to the Lotus 10 light-years away from Volat informing them that they had arrived safely.

  Then Cerl Sandford shut everything down, left the pilot seat and said goodbye to Fellmer Lloyd, shaking his hand. "The other Gazelle is 200 meters to the right. I've already located its energy dome."

  "Very good," Lloyd answered. "You may wish me luck, Sandford. I've got a feeling I'll really need it this time."

  Fellmer Lloyd waited until morning before he started out.

  He left the Gazelle well screened in a little clearing of the forest which was far away from the roads.

  After walking for an hour through the matted luxuriant growth of the forest full of unfamiliar trees, he reached the open country.

  Two hours later he came to a road but decided to avoid it because any excuse that his vehicle broke down would only arouse suspicion anywhere in the Arkonide Empire.

  He didn't complain when it was noon and he hadn't yet reached the little town of Esgun. A swamp had forced him to make a long detour and there he became embroiled in an unexpected battle with a salamander-like monster.

  He pondered the fact that his first encounter on Volat involved the most dangerous reptile of the planet and he kept thinking of Ralph Sikeron. He had been his friend and he knew the audio-monitor to have been an extremely circumspect man. His life probably had been snuffed out and it was a hundred times more dangerous to walk in the footsteps of an eliminated agent than to build his own operation from the ground up.

  The Heperais sun made the planet. Volat act like a sauna the closer it came to noon. Fellmer Lloyd trod his way unflaggingly through long-stemmed ferns and carefully avoided some reddish lichen which squirted a caustic liquid around at the slightest touch and kept even the salamander-like monsters at a respectful distance.

  It was three p.m., local time when he reached Esgun. The place was a typical small town and Fellmer Lloyd was only too glad that an express air coach left for Kuklon 5 minutes after he reached the station.

  Nevertheless he was accosted by a Springer before he could leave. The man stopped, studied him dubiously and asked in the drawling dialect of the Galactic traders: "How come you're so wet? When did it rain today?"

  Fellmer Lloyd read his mind. Thanks to Rhodan's training he did not flinch when he realized that the Springer was not merely curious but decidedly suspicious.

  But Lloyd managed to smile and with a gesture toward his clothes he replied in the unmistakable accent of a Prebonian: "Rain? This is no rain, it's sweat. And all for nothing, too. I only caught a glimpse of that Dugerun bug and then I was foolish enough to chase the damn beast for three hours."

  The Springer smirked when he heard what the perspiring Prebonian had been pursuing but was still suspicious because Lloyd did not carry the customary bag used by all collectors of this rare bug. Lloyd forestalled his question by pointing to his muddy shoes, which were stiff dirty from the swamp, and complaining bitterly about the inhospitable environment of Esgun.

  At this moment the tractor-beam transit landed on the magnetic tract. The mutant departed quickly and left the Springer standing at the station as the vehicle lifted off the track and raced the last 230 kilometers to Kuklon.

  As he sped away Lloyd examined the thoughts of the Springer. The Springer was still undecided whether to report him to the authorities in Kuklon.

  While his fellow passengers were engaged in their conversations, the telepath concentrated his mind on the Springer. The clarity of his perception was not impaired by the rapidly growing distance. Then Fellmer Lloyd suddenly leaned back in his seat. The Springer had made up his mind and was on his way to call the Arkonide administration in Kuklon to draw its attention to the Prebonian who had aroused his suspicion.

  That's a fine start, the mutant thought with dismay as he casually looked down at the landscape rolling by like a film below the air coach flying at top velocity.

  Ten minutes later the vast sea of Kuklon's buildings came into view. The airborne coach lost altitude and speed, wended its way through the high-rise buildings and set down vertically on the magnetic track of Kuklon.

  Fellmer Lloyd stood at the exit door and was waiting for it to open when he noticed three Arkonides coming along the tract. Their uniforms could not be mistaken. He picked up the thoughts of the tall men without difficulty and quickly found out what they were up to.

  He stepped back from the door and let three other travelers go ahead. Then he engaged an elderly lady who had three pieces of luggage, in a friendly conversation and offered to assist her.

  He put the baggage on his shoulders and walked out with the old lady, chatting amiably as he passed the three Arkonides who looked above his head in their search for the Prebonian.

  He was gone before the old lady could thank him and he walked in the direction of Thator Square in the Galactic section of Kuklon which was named after the most successful explorer of the Arkonides and where Ralph Sikeron had set up an office front.

  Lloyd paid no attention to the traffic snarl of the metropolis. Kuklon was a turntable in the Great Empire and a trading center of the Galactic Traders. How firmly they were entrenched was evidenced by the pompous edifices which bore the names of the clans that had erected them. The farther he went the more he saw of the magnificent office buildings of the Springers.

  Suddenly the street widened and he had reached his destination. Thator Square covered a 2-kilometer-wide area surrounded by buildings which towered 500 meters into the sky.

  Thator Square was a focal point for all the races of the Milky Way. Lloyd saw beings for the first time of which he never heard before. Some dragged along pressure suits while others leaped 10 meters with each step as they apparently came from worlds with much greater gravity. He saw monsters that made his flesh creep although he was a trained mutant. There were small creatures which reminded him of dachshunds although they had no fur or tails. But their shape and their heads looked so similar to the lovable animals of Earth that Lloyd felt like whistling at them.

  Ralph Sikeron's office was located in the house of the Uxlad clan. Lloyd watched the building cautiously and walked across the square to sniff out dangers. But his mental sensor ascertained nothing.

  The big portal looked pretentious. The Uxlad clan had adorned the electronically controlled doors with precious metals but had failed to make it look pleasing. The directory panel next to the door was no thing of beauty either. Fellmer Lloyd picked out the name of GETLOX ASARGUD TRANSPORTS. This was the name Ralph Sikeron had used to establish himself in the office building of the Uxlad clan.

  Lloyd checked his appearance. His clothes were dry again but his shoes were still muddy and he decided to change his clothes so that his task would not be frustrated by such trivial reasons.

  An hour later he was back, dressed like an elegant Arkonide. He searched again for any dangers that might be present around the Uxlad House, found none and walked through t
he ostentatious-looking portal into the reception hall.

  A robot rushed up and inquired after his wishes. The Asargud office was on the 212th floor.

  The antigrav elevator took him up in a few minutes. He noticed a great deal of traffic in the shaft. All the races of the Milky Way were represented and seemed to conduct their business with the Springer clan of the Uxlads.

  Fellmer Lloyd reached the 212th floor undisturbed. It was just below the landing area for the air taxis and small spaceships.

  The wide corridor was as ornate as the reception hall below and everything was pleasantly quiet. But the mutant had no eyes for the splendor and the wealth, he was only interested in his job. He had to get in touch with Ralph Sikeron if he was still among the living and find out the significance of the message 'Three Bells'.

  The Solar Defense on Terra had given careful thought to Fellmer Lloyd's mission before it decided to have him represent a Prebonian. This Arkonide race of colonists had been a faithful member of the Great Empire for thousands of years. Their bodies resembled Fellmer Lloyd's figure and Rhodan's mutants had learned from experience that a natural appearance was the best disguise.

  A door opened a short distance from Lloyd. A young girl walked into the corridor and looked at the mutant with curiosity. The girl had no inkling that her mind was read like an open book by him. He greeted her affably and said: "I'm looking for Asargud Transports on the 212th floor." As soon as he mentioned Sikeron's pseudonym, he noticed a hostile attitude in the Springer girl.

  Although her charming face with a hint of Mongolian features remained friendly, her voice sounded aloof. "Third door to the right. You're the eighth person today who wants to visit Asargud's office."

  Her dark eyes, which were an attractive contrast to her reddish skin, showed no more interest. With a gesture of rejection common to all young girls, she tossed her head back and walked off toward the antigravitor.

  Fellmer Lloyd refrained from looking at her. One of the girl's thoughts had made him apprehensive: another Arkonide snooper!

  Since he was anxious not to arouse suspicion, he went to the door she had pointed out to him. As expected, he found it locked but his trained eyes didn't fail to notice that it had been opened by force, although it must have been done very skilfully.

  Then he floated down again in the antigrav. He had not assumed that his first attempt to make contact with Sikeron would be successful but he was unable to dismiss the thought of the pretty young girl from his mind: Another Arkonide snooper!

  In the lobby he was almost ran over by three loudly talking men of the Mounder race who weighed about three quarters of a ton and could afford to bump into a man of normal weight. As he walked around them, his mental sensor warned him that he was being watched.

  Fellmer Lloyd, who gave the outward impression of being apathetic and awkward, was inwardly the exact opposite.

  Looking like a man who was contemplating a business deal, he left the Uxlad House, sharply observing everything around him, one hand in his pocket gripping his trusty shock-beamer.

  He pushed slowly through the crowd of multifarious races that still milled in great numbers around Thator Square.

  His mental sensor kept him alerted. There could be no doubt that a person followed him but the signals were poor and confused. It was a phenomenon Fellmer Lloyd had not experienced before.

  Two Arkonide space soldiers stood near the artistic representation of the famous explorer's spaceship for whom Thator Square was named. The two tall Arkonides in uniform stared so unabashedly at the mutant that Fellmer Lloyd could not ignore it. He accosted the two men calmly. "I beg your pardon," he said in the dialect of the Prebonians, challenging the two Arkonides. Before they could answer him Lloyd quickly informed himself of their thoughts. He was surprised by the fact that these two Arkonides who were nothing but simple soldiers had been given orders by the Kuklon Administration to look out for a certain man.

  And he was the man they were after!

  He noticed that the soldiers carried little 2-way radios, in their breast pockets and he concluded that his situation was much more precarious than he had so far believed.

  But where was the other man who had watched him as he left the Uxlad offices?

  Now the older of the Arkonides spoke up: "We didn't say anything to you." The men kept staring at his shoes. Fellmer Lloyd began to understand that the men were too confused to convey a precise thought. The only impulse he could get was: Muddy shoes!

  "No," Lloyd grumbled, "you didn't talk to me but it's very strange the way you're staring at me. You'd think I'm walking around naked."

  "The Administration has instructed us to arrest a suspect," the second soldier explained. "The man wears dirty clothes and muddy shoes. You look like him but..."

  Fellmer Lloyd began to laugh. "Don't let the robot Brain of Arkon boss you around! Why do you have to be on duty when you're here on city leave? Don't become sticks-in-the-mud of Kuklon!" He left the two men with a genial nod and disappeared in the crowd of pedestrians.

  He had no intention of leaving Thator Square. The puzzling search for his person—on such a grand scale—did not fit into the normal frame of procedure. Although the gigantic positronic Brain on Arkon, that ruled the Great Empire for almost a century, incessantly tried to shake up the Arkonides who had become lethargic, the coldly calculating machine had not been able to achieve complete success. For this reason Fellmer Lloyd's assumption that the Galactic Traders were behind the alarm was not too farfetched.

  As he circled around Thator Square he passed the Uxlad House again. The pretentious office building attracted him like a magnet. Suddenly he became tense as he picked up a distinct brainwave pattern.

  He was under observation again as he walked past the building.

  Lloyd quickly analyzed the brainwave pattern. He determined the direction from which it came and was not surprised to find that it originated in the Uxlad House portal.

  The huge doors were open and hundreds of Springers left the premises. They scurried down the wide steps and joined the throng in the street.

  All of a sudden it dawned on Fellmer Lloyd and his lips formed two words: "The girl!"

  She was watching him!

  The young Springer girl he had met on the 212th floor stood at the left side of the door and looked at him.

  Fellmer gave no sign that he had noticed her stare. He continued to probe her thoughts by telepathy and he became certain that she had followed him upon leaving Uxlad House.

  The subject that occupied her mind most intensively was Ralph Sikeron!

  3/ MYSTERY OF THE DEAD MAN

  Fellmer Lloyd spent his first night on Volat at the Plana Hotel. He slept undisturbed and his thoughts immediately returned in the morning to the tall girl with the Mongolian cheekbones whose reddish skin identified her as a daughter of the Galactic Traders.

  The girl had constantly thought of Ralph Sikeron as she watched him but they had made no further contact. Fellmer Lloyd was not in favor of hasty actions although Perry Rhodan had urged him to clear up as quickly as possible why Terra was under such severe threat from Volat.

  Fellmer Lloyd secreted his 'defensive arsenal' on his body. He was pleased that nothing pointed to his Terrestrial origin. Everything, including the most unimportant objects, were genuine products of Prebon, although the construction of his three different handguns might baffle the Arkonides if they were not familiar with their place of manufacture in the Galaxy.

  He breakfasted leisurely, as behooved a man with a calm conscience, gave instructions to retain his room and proceeded again in the direction of Thator Square.

  Something drew him inexorably to Uxlad House. He had no clear idea what it was. Could it have been the girl?

  Once more he went up to the 212th floor but decided on the way up to look first at the roofport. He found it empty except for a small high-performance spaceship. However he noticed that a cylindrical Springer ship zoomed in from the south on a course toward the roo
f.

  Lloyd acted as if he belonged to the crew of the parked craft. He had already inspected it and knew that it was empty.

  He leaned comfortably against a telescopic support and watched the cylindrical ship touch down 60 feet from him.

  Three Springers clad in spacesuits left the ship. They quickly glanced at Fellmer and walked to the antigrav elevator.

  To be on the safe side, Lloyd examined their thoughts with his telepathic concentration. The Springers were part of a crew of a space observation station which they had just left. They discussed the flight of a mysterious spacecraft which must have slipped through the rays of their rangefinders and their optical instruments. But a routine check of the positronicomputer had indicated that a tiny spaceship landed on Volat two nights ago.

  Fellmer Lloyd was dismayed to learn by his surveillance that the positronic had calculated the landing place of his Gazelle within the accuracy of 20 kilometers. Furthermore the three Springers had been advised by the tron that a similar occurrence had taken place two weeks before.

  Ralph Sikeron had arrived two weeks ago on Volat!

  Fine prospects! Lloyd thought grimly. A full-scale search by the Arkonides is all I need. By tonight half of Volat will be on my heels!

  He had no illusions and expected that all of Volat would be alerted before evening but he still wondered why the three Springers who were in the service of Arkon had come to Uxlad House.

  He investigated their thoughts once more although they had already reached the 35th floor. They mentioned something about Springer 'bosses' and referred to the town of Esgun. When Lloyd hoped to find out some more details, their conversation and thoughts shifted to small talk.

  The landing of an air taxi startled him. The whir of the engine interrupted his telepathic concentration and his mental sensor alerted him.

  He perceived the brainwave pattern before the girl got out and then her thoughts. She was late for work but wasn't thinking about her job. Ralph Sikeron was on her mind again or, more precisely, Asargud.